Brian Bowman stood surrounded by dozens of aboriginal and community leaders and admitted that Winnipeg has a problem with racism. The city’s first Metis mayor broke down in tears as he talked about passing on his heritage to his young children.

“My wife is Ukrainian heritage. My family is Metis,” he said as he choked back tears. “I want my boys to be as proud of both of those family lines.”

Macleans magazine published a cover story that gave Winnipeg the dubious distinction. It cited the huge gap between aboriginals and non-aboriginals, as well as the recent high-profile death of 15-year-old Tina Fontaine, whose body was found in August wrapped in plastic in the Red River.

It also comes shortly after an inquest report into the death of Brian Sinclair, an aboriginal double-amputee who died during a 34-hour wait for care in a city hospital’s emergency room in 2008. Some staff testified that they assumed he was drunk — “sleeping it off” — or homeless.

The reaction to the article from city hall was swift. The police chief, the provincial treaty commissioner, chiefs and community leaders assembled — not to refute the article — but to promise to do something about the issue it highlighted.

“We do have racism in Winnipeg … You can’t run away from facts,” Bowman said following a closed-door traditional smudging ceremony. “Ignorance, hatred, intolerance, racism exists everywhere.

“Winnipeg has a responsibility right now to turn this ship around and change the way we all relate.”

Mayor Brian Bowman was joined by Elder Harry Bone, Grand Chief Derek Nepinak, Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs, Jamie Wilson, Treaty Commissioner, Treaty Relations Commission of Manitoba, Police Chief Devon Clunis, Honourable Kevin Chief, Minister of Jobs & the Economy, and Minister responsible for relations with the City of Winnipeg, Dr. David Barnard, President and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Manitoba, Dr. Annette Trimbee, President and Vice Chancellor at the University of Winnipeg, Julie Harper, Mother of Rinelle Harper, Michael Champagne and Althea Guiboche amongst others. [Mike Deal / Winnipeg Free Press]

Bowman said that means having an open dialogue with aboriginal leaders before taking concrete action, which he said is coming.

Grand Chief Derek Nepinak with the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs said keeping the lines of communication open is key. But he warned that combating racism is a huge challenge.

“I guarantee you that, right now, somebody is having a racist experience in a restaurant or on the streets in Winnipeg somewhere. I’m not here to pacify that or to say that it’s OK,” Nepinak said.

“There are people who are wilfully blind, wilfully ignorant to the reality of indigenous people in this society. But we will challenge them.”

Ovide Mercredi, a former national chief of the Assembly of First Nations, said he has experienced racism, but has not let it embitter him. There are many within the aboriginal community with the energy to fight prejudice and ensure there is “zero tolerance” for racism, he said.

“I have a right to be different. If we as a society make that a basic principle — that all human beings have a right to be different — we’d go a long way to solving the intolerance that many people experience,” Mercredi said. “Instead of putting each other down, we should be trying to lift each other up.”

Winnipeg police Chief Devon Clunis, who is black, said he doesn’t believe Winnipeg is the only city grappling with racism. Racism exists across Canada and is part of the “human condition,” he suggested.

“We need to have a difficult conversation in our city respective of race,” Clunis said. “I think you are seeing who is starting that conversation today.”

]]>http://o.canada.com/news/winnipeg-mayor-responds-to-macleans-story-declaring-city-most-racist-in-canada/feed10123 Winnipeg racismthecanadianpressMayor Brian Bowman was joined by Elder Harry Bone, Grand Chief Derek Nepinak, Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs, Jamie Wilson, Treaty Commissioner, Treaty Relations Commission of Manitoba, Police Chief Devon Clunis, Honourable Kevin Chief, Minister of Jobs & the Economy, and Minister responsible for relations with the City of Winnipeg, Dr. David Barnard, President and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Manitoba, Dr. Annette Trimbee, President and Vice Chancellor at the University of Winnipeg, Julie Harper, Mother of Rinelle Harper, Michael Champagne and Althea Guiboche amongst others. Grand Chief Derek Nepinak addresses the media. ‘Edulis’: Caballo and Nemeth on establishing ‘Canada’s Best New Restaurant’http://o.canada.com/life/food-drink/edulis-caballo-and-nemeth-on-establishing-canadas-best-new-restaurant
http://o.canada.com/life/food-drink/edulis-caballo-and-nemeth-on-establishing-canadas-best-new-restaurant#commentsThu, 08 Nov 2012 15:05:17 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=145601]]>Chef Michael Caballo describes the food served at Toronto’s Edulis as “a cuisine of inspiration.” Caballo and his wife Tobey Nemeth established the acclaimed restaurant with the desire to combine their love of European-style bistros with the bounty of southern Ontario.

Dishes change as Caballo is inspired by the daily offerings of local farmers and suppliers, with the menu changing gradually throughout any given week. There is also a carte blanche dinner menu option – “Put your belly in our hands (we promise to be nice)…” – and a European set lunch menu on Sundays.

Current menu items such as Black and White Boudin Chanterelles, Smoked Apple Jus, and Roasted Duck Breast with Peeled Tomatoes, Wild Dandelion, Lobster Mushrooms and Duck Skin Crumbs evidence the pair’s love of wild and foraged foods, particularly mushrooms. The restaurant’s name is Latin for edible as well as the name of their favourite wild mushroom – the Boletus edulis – the porcini or cep. “And to us it’s evocative of the old-fashioned or tradition. All those beautiful things,” Nemeth explains.

PHOTO: Christopher LewisThe interior of Edulis

Caballo and Nemeth opened Edulis on April 27, 2012 and the restaurant has since gained a devoted following and critical acclaim. enRoute recently named it Canada’s Best New Restaurant 2012, and Maclean’s included it as one of Canada’s 50 Best Restaurants. The two had always dreamed of opening their own restaurant and left Toronto in 2008 with the intention of finding a suitable place. After four years of travelling and cooking in Spain, Italy, B.C. and Panama, in what Nemeth describes as, “a combination of professional sabbatical and adventure-seeking,” they learned that Anton Potvin was selling Niagara Street Café.

Caballo had served as executive chef at Niagara Street Café from 2005 to 2008, and both he and Nemeth immediately recognized the space as being perfect for their endeavour. “We always saw it as that perfect proportion, the fact that it’s on a side street. There’s an intimacy and tranquility to the place that we loved,” Nemeth says. “We always held the image of it as an idea of a place that we loved but without ever imagining that it might become available. So it was a magical moment when we found out that was happening.” Caballo adds that the timing was right, saying, “Just in the last year we started thinking about [moving back to Toronto] again – about how great the bounty of produce is and the connection to suppliers, and how special it is here. A light went off and it felt right. Right timing, right place, and we needed to do it.”

PHOTO: Christopher LewisThe exterior of Edulis

The four years the pair spent travelling and working internationally has had a major impact on their approach with Edulis. “Travel and reading are the two most important things for people to do in this business. If you were to tell young cooks to do two things it would be to travel and eat, and read,” Caballo says. “Just seeing how they grow a certain vegetable in the countryside in Italy or something you don’t have [here], just that relation with the earth that you see, maybe not here as much as you do when you’re really immersed in something [abroad]. It affects how you look at everything.”

Caballo finds daily inspiration in the great French chefs such as Vincent La Chapelle. “Ma Gastronomie, the Fernand Point book, is the epitome of what every cook who sets food in a kitchen should read,” he says. “It’s about the ethics and the joy of this business. It’s really beautiful. That book probably inspires me at least once every single day. But it’s more just that personality of chef that I love.”

Wild and foraged ingredients are central to Caballo’s dishes, and also to his process, “For me, mushroom hunting is a personal thing. I enjoy going out, solitary in the forest and hunting and turning over leaves. It’s a time alone with your thoughts and a wonderful time for inspiration,” he says. Caballo grew up in Edmonton, Alberta but didn’t start foraging for wild ingredients until he was introduced to the practice at Mugaritz – a restaurant in the countryside outside of San Sebastián, Spain – approximately 10 years ago where one of his daily tasks was picking wild flowers and herbs.

“It was a short experience – just a couple of months – but it was extremely influential in my mindset as a cook and it’s a really wonderful place. It’s like a temple,” Caballo says. “And I had come off working at a place in Madrid, which kind of did the opposite to me. It was a great place to get food but it was a very harsh environment.” Working at Mugaritz renewed his inspiration and offered new insight into what cuisine at that level could be. “I was really, really touched by the picking of the herbs wildly and that set me off on a path of acquiring knowledge, especially with mushrooms, but with leafy things as well,” he says. “It was great. It’s a great place. Like I said, it was very short but it changed the way I look at a kitchen and food. And how I comport myself in a kitchen as well.”

The model of Caballo in the kitchen and Nemeth, also a chef, managing the business and front of the house is one that they had tested in Panama. “We were running a hotel and restaurant there, and we were in these roles. I was the general manager and Michael was the executive chef. And we loved it,” Nemeth says. “We worked together really well that way and I think there’s an ideal in that, that I can jump in and help in the kitchen and that we both know on both sides that someone has our back.”

The hands-on nature of running a small, 32-seat restaurant is ideal for Caballo and Nemeth. They have a small staff – two in the kitchen and three in the dining room – that Nemeth refers to as being like family, “I worked with [our dining room staff] for years when I was chef at Jamie Kennedy Wine Bar and one of them worked here for Anton [Potvin] for many years. It’s just a return to somewhere very comfortable for all of us, which is really nice.”

]]>http://o.canada.com/life/food-drink/edulis-caballo-and-nemeth-on-establishing-canadas-best-new-restaurant/feed0Tobey Nemeth and Michael CaballolbrehautThe interior of EdulisThe exterior of EdulisLightly smoked herring à l’huile, left, and Chantecler chicken baked in hay‘Star Wars Kid’ goes on a media blitz 10 years laterhttp://o.canada.com/entertainment/celebrity/star-wars-kid-goes-on-a-media-blitz-10-years-later
http://o.canada.com/entertainment/celebrity/star-wars-kid-goes-on-a-media-blitz-10-years-later#commentsThu, 09 May 2013 13:00:49 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=245462]]>Ghyslain Raza, one of the first people to gain notoriety from a viral video, is the subject of a cover story for Canada’s two major news magazines this week. He’s talking about what it’s like to be cyber-bullied.

As a 14-year-old, he used his high school’s TV studio in November 2002 to film a two-minute clip in which he clumsily impersonated a light saber-wielding Jedi Knight with the help of a golf ball retriever.

The attention earned the Trois-Rivieres, Que., teenager the nickname “Star Wars Kid” the following year as he became Internet famous.

L’Actualite

An interview with Jonathan Trudel of French-language Quebec magazine L’Actualite has also been published across Canada in Maclean’s.

Maclean’s

Readers are promised a story in which the 25-year-old McGill University legal graduate student “breaks his silence” — although an update appeared in 2010 on Vice’s technology website Motherboard.

At the time, Raza had become president of a heritage conservation society in Trois-Rivieres.

Ghyslain Raza in his role as president of heritage society Patrimoine Trois-Rivieres.

“Every single talk show in North America wanted me as a guest,” Raza recalled. “I still have Jay Leno’s invitation. A Japanese show offered me a lot of money.

“But why were they inviting me? They wanted to turn me into a circus act.”

Regardless, his identity had been revealed on Quebec television as a loop of the video was being chuckled at by millions, something Raza feels he should’ve been protected from as a minor.

The stories note that the infamous video predated much of the current technology when it was transferred from a dusty VHS cassette found on a shelf, uploaded to the file-sharing sites of the day, then turning up on a variety of streaming video websites that existed a couple of years before YouTube.

Raza has gone public in the effort to share his story with others who might’ve suffered a similar experience in this increasingly media-contagious era.

Back then, the unwanted attention was enough to make him lose his friends and force him out of high school to learn with a private tutor while getting therapy.

But rumours he was committed to a psychiatric ward weren’t true. Rather, he ended up writing his exams in a hospital because it was the most convenient and quiet place that could be found.

American Dad parody in Maclean’s

The interview touched on the fact that he received an “overwhelming” number of media requests as the video went viral. Yet reading negative online comments overwhelmed Raza even more.